Restoring Charity: Where do We Go From Here?

Advocates of the principles articulated in the preceding chapters can find much to celebrate in the historic federal welfare law passed in late 1996. While far from perfect, the sweeping reforms reshape America's government welfare system in ways consonant with the arguments of Parts I and II of this volume. This reshaping is a remarkable achievement and a significant step forward. But many more steps remain if we are to accomplish what the title of this book proposes: to go beyond "transforming welfare" to "reviving American charity."

For those who mourn the decay of our cities and hate the violence, abuse, destitution, and despair that reign there, the ultimate goal has never been just "ending welfare as we know it." The ultimate goal is transforming broken lives and renewing distressed communities. Radically reforming the government welfare system was one prerequisite for genuine progress towards this goal, a necessary but insufficient task. Even more challenging work lies ahead: reinvigorating a sense of community, solidarity, and love of neighbor among families, voluntary associations, businesses, and churches.

Since I direct a church-based outreach to a lower-income urban community, I will focus principally in this essay on what the faith community needs to do to move beyond welfare reform to the revival of American charity.

The overhaul of the government welfare system presents the institutions of civil society—especially churches and religious charities—with tremendous challenges and opportunities. Millions of individuals on welfare now find themselves in an entirely new situation: They must secure employment fast and prepare themselves in two to three years for life independent of public assistance. Some of these individuals will be able to accomplish these things fairly quickly. Others—especially those with little family support, a spotty work history, few marketable job and "life-coping" skills, and significant personal problems (for example, addiction to drugs or a history of abusive relationships)—will need substantial support from caring people who will walk alongside them as they attempt the transition off the dole. The need is great, and the world is watching to see whether churches will rise to the occasion and put into practice the Biblical injunction to love our needy neighbors.

Many churches will need to change their approach to social outreach, for they have made the same mistakes government welfare made. They have, for example, offered only material assistance rather than addressing the needs of the "whole man." They have distributed aid in ways that encouraged dependency on the part of aid recipients. Simply put, many well-intentioned but misguided churches have helped needy people to manage their poverty, rather than to escape it. Now is the time for churches to recapture the wise benevolence offered by godly poverty-fighters from times past; to put into practice the principles Marvin Olasky and Gertrude Himmelfarb describe in their essays.

Churches that want to get more involved in community outreach should also seek to identify whether some effective, faith-based poverty fighters already exist in their cities and then to design ways of supporting them. Resource-rich churches in the suburbs especially need to pursue partnerships with urban churches promoting community development in inner-city neighborhoods. Such partnerships are not easy to start. They require persistence, humility, and a long-term commitment to racial reconciliation. But genuine partnerships are happening in Chicago, Richmond, Phoenix, and Washington, and are possible in many more communities.

Increasingly, as governmental bureaucrats look to private charities to help them serve welfare families, churches will also have to assess whether to collaborate with their local department of social service (DSS). Many congregations have already responded to the plea for help: partnerships between churches and local DSS offices are underway in Mississippi, Michigan, Virginia, Maryland, and Louisiana in which church members mentor individuals making the transition from welfare to work. Successful public-private collaboration is marked by several features that churches should look for. These include "ground-floor-up" input in designing the partnership; mutual respect; clear definitions of expectations and roles; freedom for the church to minister creatively and holistically; a recognizable "leverage system" that holds welfare recipients accountable; and regular, candid communication. Where these characteristics are present, collaboration may be worthwhile and fruitful; where they are absent, churches may find that they cannot minister effectively or that their faith-based approach is squelched.

As we look to the future, policy makers, church and para-church leaders, and businessmen will need to consider strategically how to work together to make the promise of welfare reform—bringing about permanent, positive transformation in the lives of needy families—a reality. We can rejoice over the efforts of existing, effective private charities and over the signals that more churches are recognizing the need to increase their outreach. The sober reality, though, is that the needs of the poor exceed the currently-in-place capacities of the faith community. Clearly, the scope and scale of faith-based outreach must dramatically expand. Even the very best church-based community development initiatives—such as the impressive efforts of Bethel New Life and the Lawndale Community Church in inner-city Chicago—have successfully addressed only a fraction of the problem.

Churches must begin the practical work of restructuring themselves to do relational, "permanent-change-oriented" ministry rather than conventional, commodity-based outreach. Such restructuring will, at a minimum, involve four things. First, church leaders must establish a system for inventorying the talents and resources of their congregants. Second, they must investigate the needs of their communities, learning who is doing what (and how they can help) and identifying that which is being left undone. Third, they need to pray and deliberate in order to articulate their own peculiar mission. Church leaders need to specify their outreach philosophy and prioritize their goals. A vague "we should do more in light of welfare reform" is not sufficient. Simply deciding to serve more people may also be misguided—if doing so creates an outreach that is a mile wide in breadth but only an inch deep in terms of meaningful impact. In short, church leaders must make concrete plans. Perhaps they will decide to mentor a certain number of families on welfare, or start a serious outreach to at-risk youth, or "adopt" a neighborhood of need and target their available human and financial resources on that particular community. The important thing is that they make clear their intentions, so that the congregation has a fixed vision around which to rally. Fourth, church leaders must design effective systems for recruiting, training, placing, and affirming large numbers of volunteers who can walk alongside poor people as they take steps to escape their poverty.

In addition to this restructuring, church leaders also need to educate their congregants on the responsibilities they have to work for justice through their personal spheres of influence. This will require promoting "indirect" ministries as well as direct outreach. Just as some people are called to go to the mission field, others are called to stay behind and provide prayer and financial support to those who go. A similar principle applies to the church's local outreach. Let us suppose that the First Baptist Church has decided to launch an after-school tutoring program in a public housing complex to benefit at-risk elementary school students. Mr. Jones is a bank executive and member of First Baptist. It may not be a bad idea for Mr. Jones to volunteer at the tutoring center. Perhaps he needs to be exposed to the realities of life in the projects, since he does not interact with poor families in the course of his daily life. But it may be even more strategic for Mr. Jones to use his influence at the bank in ways that can serve the families of this housing community. Perhaps he could convince the bank to launch a micro-entrepreneurial loan program for neighborhood residents who desire to start their own businesses. Or perhaps he could suggest that the bank establish an internship training program that would give single mothers on welfare the opportunity to be trained as bank tellers.

Moreover, to make a long-term, strategic impact in fighting poverty, some church leaders will need to eschew their suspicious—even hostile—attitudes towards business. Too many church people bristle at the notion of "business as ministry" or the idea that business can be a calling. We must be careful not to exalt non-profit activities as though they were somehow inherently more noble than for-profit activities. Both are vital. Indeed, as greater responsibility for the care of the poor falls on the private sector, we will need far more strategic partnerships between for-profit and non-profit organizations. Our decaying neighborhoods need new businesses to create new job opportunities. Moreover, in order for non-profit groups to continue offering much needed social services (educational programs for kids, benevolence programs for the low-income elderly, job readiness classes, parenting workshops) they need sustainable sources of income. Businessmen with a heart for the poor could start for-profit businesses that earmark a certain percentage of their profits to underwrite such non-profit activities. And if such businesses were begun with an eye toward providing a necessary community service (for example, a child care center open during non-traditional hours or an easily accessible laundromat) or offering jobs to inner-city teens, that is all the better.

To increase the scale of church-based outreach to the poor, para-church organizations too must rethink their work and consider adding to their current activities two new roles. The first is that of a "third party bridge." This is an organization with ties to the church that can stand between the faith community and the local department of social services. (The Salvation Army and Love, INC are two good examples.) For example, in Fairfax County's Project HOMES initiative, seventy five churches were mobilized to help over two hundred fifty homeless families move out of shelters and into new homes and jobs. This high level of involvement occurred because Community Ministries, an organization founded by several mainline churches to study local issues and advise churches on how to reach out to their communities, served as an intermediary between the government agency involved and the local congregations. Community Ministries' director helped to fashion the initiative and then took the idea back to the churches, endorsing it and offering to train church volunteers for service among the homeless.

Second, para-church organizations should consider expanding their efforts in providing training to congregations that desire to increase their community outreach. Today we have many successful models of church-based ministry among the poor and many churches desirous of doing good works who are unaware of these effective models. This ignorance means that well-intentioned churches keep reinventing the wheel as they launch new outreach efforts, often making mistakes that they could have avoided had they learned from the examples of groups that had already established similar programs. Clearly, we need more organizations dedicated to publicizing effective models: writing "how-to" manuals for churches that want to replicate the successful efforts of others, offering on-site training, and serving as coordinators of mentoring programs that link new ministries with older, more experienced ministries.

These are exciting times for everyone desirous of reviving a clear-minded, warm-hearted compassion that can help poor people help themselves. For the first time in years, grassroots poverty fighters who live by the principles outlined in this book do not have their work made much harder by the existence of a governmental welfare system that actively subsidized self-destructive behavior and failed to reward personal responsibility and hard work. In addition, the public debate over welfare reform is beginning to awaken many citizens to a renewed awareness that they are their brother's keeper. It has stimulated some innovative proposals in Washington—such as Charitable Choice and the charity tax credit—as well as jump-started conversations in church halls about how to improve congregational outreach to the poor. Most importantly, in recent years the effective efforts of faith-based groups on the front lines of the battles against drugs, crime, and destitution have finally been noticed. Even as we have been reminded of the failures of the government's War on Poverty, we have discovered grassroots approaches to personal and community development that actually work. We certainly don't know all the answers, but we do know there are successful models out there that can be replicated. There are good reasons to be optimistic about the future.

Nevertheless, it is prudent to close with a word of caution. We should be enthusiastic, but we must also avoid over-promising. The process of leading someone off of welfare and into productive citizenship is usually a lengthy one marked by small steps of progress and frequent set-backs. Welfare reform is not only about saving taxpayers' money or getting people jobs; the goal—at least for Christians—should be encouraging substantial life transformation. Securing employment is, of course, vital. But in many instances, landing a job is simply one step among many that a person must take on the road to becoming truly self-sufficient. Thus, we need sober commitment, not a giddy expectation that because of welfare reform we have solved the "underclass problem." We are now on a better path, but we have a long road ahead.

Amy L. Sherman is Director of Urban Ministries at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville, Virginia. She received her doctorate in foreign affairs/economic development from the University of Virginia in 1994. Her most recent books are The Soul of Development (Oxford University Press, 1997) and Restorers of Hope: Reaching the Poor in Your Community With Church-based Ministries That Work (Crossway Books, 1997).